spirit.fire.she

Please join me TONIGHT @7pm as I host a Ledisi listening party at Carol’s Daughter in Harlem! No RSVP required!

I was in the audience that November in 2010 at The Paradise Theater in the Bronx for BET’s epic production of the Black Girls Rock Awards Show. I watched Ledisi pull, pump and puncture the heck outta Nina Simone’s “Four Women.” Although the performance also featured Kelly Price, Marsha Ambrosius and Jill Scott, it was Read more...

Singer Res is a shapeshifter. Instead of getting stuck, silenced or worse, stereotyped, she changes-up her flow a little bit here, and revises her steez a little there, and with every transformation she seems to be moving closer to the fly woman artist of her dreams.

I remember when How I Do dropped. It was Black cool on another level. “Golden Boys” was the joint— Res with all that sass pulling down the curtain Read more...

If Paulo Coelho’s best-selling, uber-iconic, The Alchemist, had a soundtrack, “The Gypsy Diaries” would be it! On “The Gypsy Diaries,” Imani Uzuri’s sophomore solo CD, it feels as though Imani just ripped pages from her personal journal and set them on fire through testimony and song. Her music, including her first album “Her Holy Water,” is largely about self-discovery and how losing yourself via travel– especially for a sister that appreciates sand between her Read more...

It’s International Women’s Day and I’m so excited to announce the re-launch of HOT GRRRLS COOL MUSIC!!! We debuted a lil’ more than 10 years ago with Santigold, Jeni Fujita and Imani Uzuri and now, just in time for Women’s History Month, I’m so amped to share that I’ve partnered with some fresh, music lovin’ visionaries and we are back!

Setting off HGCM 2014 is one of the original Hot Grrrls—IMANI UZURI on Thursday, Read more...

Today is Helen Folasade Adu’s Birthday! She’s an incredible 54-years old today! Clearly, legends stay beautiful! As one of our most dynamic, sultry and sweetest soul singers, theHotness wishes her continued success and love. And thanks for putting us big foreheaded sisters squarely and magnificently on the map of beauty.

“Artistically, I have high aspirations. I don’t want to do anything less than the best I can do. I’m not trying to promote an image.” Read more...

Next Wednesday, May 2nd, I have the honor of moderating “Nice With Hers”— a conversation (plus fab intro by ebony.com’s Jamilah Lemieux) with Karen Good, Kierna Mayo, and dream hampton — some of the fearless female journalists who wrote the narrative of how the world came to know hip hop, culture, fashion, and itself at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, USA. I’m thrilled, nervous and totally consumed with what Read more...

It’s taken me an entire week to write this post. The shock I had when Michael Jackson died pales in comparison to how stunned I felt last Saturday evening when I heard about Whitney’s passing. I’m still so stunned. Shook. Unlike MJ, I, like so many other Black girls, saw myself in Whitney. I saw my potential in and through Whitney and her success. She Read more...

Born Jamesetta Hawkins and known affectionately as Miss Peaches, the ever-adored badass beauty Etta James transitioned this morning at the age of 73, less than a week shy of her 74th birthday.

I realize there’s a contingency of folk who just recently got put on to the magic that was Miss Peaches via Beyonce’s tortured cinematic portrayal, but so many more of us have long been spinning our parent’s vinyl. We swooned to “I Read more...

My first ever music review was for True magazine (the predecessor to sister mag Trace). It was early summer in 1995 and my assignment was to breakdown the hotness of Cesária Évora’s eponymous US debut. My editor told me that Ms. Évora was going to be in NYC later in the month and to make sure I see her perform in the flesh in order to get the full picture of why everyone Read more...

With strength he didn’t know
It’s you I’m fighting for
We put it in writing
But who you writing for
Just us on kitchen floor
Justice done,
I’ll battle til this bitter finale
Just me, my dignity and this guitar case.

Amy Winehouse was a Blues Woman in every sense of the word. She carried a heavy load and unpacked it for all the world to see without adornment, accoutrement or affectation. Girlfriend kept it Read more...